Head of Fundraising

Job Purpose

We are looking for a fundraising specialist with the abilities and ambition to grow our charitable income generation and take ANT to our next level of impact.

Our current fundraising strategy is focused around corporate partnerships, individual giving campaigns (in particular crowdfunders where we have a strong track record), philanthropists and trusts and foundations.

We are particularly interested in individuals with experience and skillsets in areas that would complement and build on existing strengths and experience in the team; generating new leads in relationship fundraising context, developing and diversifying our individual giving offering and building excellent stewardship journeys.

You will help grow out impact by inspiring and influencing others to follow us in our ambitious plans for change.

Main responsibilities

• Lead from the front to grow our fundraising operations and strategy
  • Work with the Director of Income and fundraising team to review and refresh our fundraising strategy, as we enter its third year
  • Carry out a stocktake of recent performance and identify areas for growth 
  • Develop workstream plans for the year across different fundraising areas including generating new corporate partners and mid to high level philanthropist supporter leads, testing new individual giving channels and developing excellent donor stewardship
  • Look at continuing sustainable growth of unrestricted income, with an eye to further diversifying our fundraising streams longer term
  • Develop and foster relationships with new and existing strategic partners, funders and supporters
• Leadership of the fundraising team at ANT, providing clear strategic vision, guidance and support
• Line management of two fundraising leads, supporting them to develop and grow their skills
• As part of the senior leadership team, work with the Chief Executive and other Heads on organisational strategy, fundraising and communications planning
• Develop strong working relationships across the organisation and bring together relevant people in matrix working style groups, to avoid siloed ways of working

Working relationships and expectations

• As a member of the senior leadership team, you will work closely with the Chief Executive and other Heads, helping to lead the organisation in an exciting period of change and growth
• As a member of the Income team, you will work closely with the Director of Income. You will  manage two direct reports at Lead level. You will collaborate more widely across the organisation coordinating comms needs from different teams. 
• Hybrid working between home and our office at Lower Chew Forest, Compton Dando with the expectation of being present in our office or on site at least one day in a typical week
• Occasional evening and weekend working will be required but this is not a substantial feature of your role
• Our staff maintain an appropriate level of confidentiality, professionalism and discretion at all times
• Our staff comply with organisational policies, procedures, and guidance, and external regulations and laws

Person specification

Essential

• Passion and commitment to addressing the climate and nature emergencies in general and woodland creation in particular 
• Ambitious and positive about new opportunities and challenges, especially driving new projects
• Strong track record of charity fundraising management and growing income streams, including strategic planning, forecasting, management of fundraising workstreams and reporting on performance against targets
• Demonstrable experience developing in managing and growing relationship based charity fundraising, especially corporate partnerships, philanthropy and individual giving
• Excellent interpersonal skills and a proven ability to build and maintain strong, productive relationships with supporters, funders and strategic partners. 
• Excellent knowledge of data protection and GDPR considerations
• Strong people management and leadership skills, backed up by your own experience of line managing others
• Experience managing complex projects 
• Ability to work proactively on own initiative, continually learning and evaluating projects to improve delivery of our projects

Desirable

• Technical knowledge and understanding of the climate and biodiversity crises
• An understanding of the charity sector, the challenges specific to it and fundraising channels
• Experience of managing communications across paid, owned and earned channels including digital, press & PR at a local and national level
• Experience maintaining and developing CRM systems to support excellent supporter journeys
• Experience with analytics platforms to track all stages of the lead acquisition journey and inform optimisations
• Experience managing paid search accounts and the Google Grant
• A valid UK driver’s licence and access to a vehicle would facilitate travel to our sites where required

Our commitment to equality and equity

Your application will have all personal details redacted before being assessed by our short-listing panel. 

As a Disability Confident employer, we will offer an interview to disabled candidates who meet the  essential criteria for the role. 

To address any diversity gaps in our team we will also offer an interview to candidates who meet  the essential criteria and are from under-represented groups. At this time this applies to those from  Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. 

Avon Needs Trees is a Living Wage and Disability Confident accredited employer, and a supporter  of the West of England Good Employment Charter. We especially welcome applications from under-represented group